arefully arranged by him." "The whole history of the Western liturgy
supports us in maintaining that these books received from the great Pope
or from one of his contemporaries a form which never afterwards
underwent any radical or essential alteration." The Roman office spread
quickly through Europe. The enthusiasm of Gregory became rooted in the
monasteries, where the monks learned and taught, with knowledge and
with zeal, his liturgical reforms. Two important reforms of monastic
practice are interesting as showing further progress in the evolution of
the Roman Breviary. St. Benedict of Aniane (751-821), the friend and
adviser of Louis the Pious, became a reformer of Benedictine rule and
practice. His rule aimed at a rigid uniformity, even in detail. And the
Council of Aix-la-Chapelle (817) helped him to establish his reforms. As
a result of the saint's exertions the Penitential Psalms and Office of
the Dead were made part of the daily monastic office. The Abbey of
Cluny, founded in 910, supplied a further reform tending to guard the
office from further accretions.

Did Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII. (1073-1086), labour for liturgical
reform? Liturgical writers give very different replies. Monsignor
Battifol (_History of the Roman Breviary_, English edition, p. 158)
maintains that Gregory made no reform, and that "the Roman office such
as we have seen it to be in the times of Charlemagne held its ground at
Rome itself, in the customs of the basilicas, without any sensible
modification, throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries and even down
to the close of the twelfth." Dom Gueranger holds that Gregory abridged
the order of prayers and simplified the liturgy for the use of the Roman
curia. It would be difficult at the present time to ascertain accurately
the complete form of the office before this revision, but since then it
has remained almost identical with what it was at the end of the
eleventh century. Dom Baumer agrees with his Benedictine brother that
Gregory wrought for liturgical reform. Probably Pope Gregory VII.,
knowing the decadence which was manifest in liturgical exercises in Rome
during the tenth and eleventh centuries, decided to revise the old Roman
office which, although it had decayed in Rome, flourished in Germany,
France, and other countries. Hence, in his Lenten Synod, 1074, he
promulgated the rules he had already drawn up for the Regular Canons of
Rome, ordering them to return to the old Roman ri